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AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR THE PRINTING OF DOCUMENTS 
RELATING TO AMERICAN HISTORY. 

With a view to securing greater uniformity of treatment than 
now exists, the Chairman of the Historical Manuscripts Commis- 
sion, the Chief of the Division of Manuscripts in the Library of Con- 
gress, and the Director of the Department of Historical Research 
in the Carnegie Institution have united in framing the following 
suggestions respecting the transcription and printing of historical 
manuscripts. It is not intended to restrict editors too rigidly to 
certain rules, as the individual character of the manuscript is of 
some importance, as well as the judgment and experience of the 
editor. The following rules are, therefore, to be regarded less as 
formulae than as suggestions, to serve in ordinary cases and to be 
modified if occasion requires. 

Edward G. Bourne, 

CJiairmau of the Historical Maimscripts Commission. 

WoRTHiNGTON C. FoRD, Library of Congress. 

J. Franklin Jameson, 

Carnegie Institution of Wasliingti n 

1. The Heading of Individual Documents. ^f ii)e document is 
a letter, the name of the sender and that of tl c person addressed 
should be printed in small capitals immediately abo\e it beginning, 
thus : 

George Washington to John Ada 

If it is an official letter, addressed to an official as le form 

should be : • 

George Washington to the Secretary of War 

[Timothy Pickering] . or 

Andrew Jackson to the Governor of Virginia 

[William Branch Giles] . 

If the publication consists of a series of letters written by, or to, 
one man, a heading of the form To John Adams, or From John 
Adams will suffice. If it is not a letter, a very brief description 
should be placed in the heading, e. g., Report of the Committee 
OF Foreign Affairs. 

2. 77/1? Description of the Manuscript. This should be given in 
the first foot-note to the document. The reference-mark to this 
foot-note should be placed either against the heading described in 
the last paragraph or against the date, if the document bears a date 
as its first words. The description should present, first, a state- 
rrient whether the document is entirely by the author's hand, or 

vitten by a secretary and signed, etc. For this purpose the usual 
^x)ls could be used, namely, A. L. S. (autograph letter signed^ 

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A. D. S. (autograph document signed), L. S. (letter signed), D. S. 
(document signed), A. N. S. (autograph note signed), A. N. (auto- 
graph note). Next should follow a statement as to the location of 
the manuscript, indicating the pubhc institution or private collector 
in whose possession it is. In the former case the volume, page, or 
numerical designation by which the institution has catalogued the 
manuscript should be given. If the main substance of the publica- 
tion consists of documents of one particular collection, repetition 
can be avoided in the case of documents drawn from that source 
by initials placed at the right of the heading : i\ g., if the letters of 
Jackson were being printed and most of them were derived from the 
collection of Jackson manuscripts in the Library of Congress, the 
heading could read, in the case of such letters, 

To John Smith j. mss. 

Thirdly, if the document whose text is being printed is not an 
original letter actually sent, but a draft or a copy, the fact should be 
stated in the first foot-note. Where the writer, though he is not the 
author, is a known person, his name also should be given there. In 
a typical instance accordingly, the first foot-note to the document 
might have the form, "A. L. S. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 
James Wilson MSS., Vol. I., no. 26. Draft, in handwriting of John 
Rutledge." 

3. The Date. If the letter or document begins with a date, this 
should be presented in the form which it bears in the manuscript. 
But if the date lies between the years 1582 and 1752 it should be 
repeated in a double form, presenting it in both old style and 
new style. Thus : 

" Feb. the i ith, 1731. [February ii I73|]-" 
Where it is certain that all the documents which are to be printed 
in the proposed volume are dated uniformly in new (or in old) style, 
it may be sufficient to set forth the fact once for all in the preface. 
If the matter presented does not consist of letters, and presents no 
dates, or infrequent dates — for instance, in long narratives which 
are being reprinted — it is often desirable that the date of the 
transactions referred to upon a given page should be set in the run- 
ning head-lines of that page. If a document is undated and the 
date is conjecturally supplied, it should be set in square brackets, 
with a question-mark if there is any doubt. In such cases it is well 
to scrutinize the water-mark of the paper and state the date which 
it gives, if any. 

4. The Text. Save for certain exceptions, to be noted hereafter, 
the manuscripts should be printed as written, with exactness in re- 
spect to words, spelling, and punctuation i^ocrbatim et literatim et 
punctuatini). The actual copyist should be given no latitude in 
the following of this rule. He should be instructed to trace all 
doubtful writings, especially doubtful proper names. All drawings 
and sketches in the text should be reproduced by tracing. Unlc- 
the editor is conscious of having had long experience and of h) 
k^Z published books of documents which have been approve 

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experts, it is perhaps best that he also should make no exception to 
the rule stated in the first sentence of this paragraph. But as the 
end to be achieved is the printing of the manuscript in the form 
which it would have borne if the author had contemporaneously put 
it into print, the following exceptions may well be observed : 

a. Words which have been repeated, obviously by mistake of the 
penman, may be omitted. 

b. Words which have been omitted, obviously by mistake of the 
penman, may be supplied in square brackets. 

c. In the use of 7i and v respectively and of / and J, the modern 
practice may be substituted for that of the manuscript. Long s 
should never be used. 

d. Abbreviations should be expanded, square brackets being 
used to indicate the letters inserted. With the same precaution, 
superior letters may be reduced to the level of the rest of the text. 
If such changes are extremely numerous and are uniform through- 
out the text, the cases in which they are open to no doubt may be 
mentioned beforehand in the preface, and the square brackets sub- 
sequently avoided in such instances. 

e. The sign & should always be represented by and; the form 
&c., by etc. ; the sign y* usually by the ; and so, of y', y", etc. 

/. Obvious slips of the pen, aside from those mentioned in " a" i 

above, may be corrected in the text, the original reading being / 
stated in the foot-note. But the spelling of the original when not / 
clearly accidental should be followed, and especial care should be / 
exercised on proper names, as what appears to be a misspelling ^ 
may be of value in indicating the pronunciation of that day. 

g. Passages written in cipher should be transliterated but printed 
in italics, the preface or foot-note indicating that this has been done. 

//. Where a gap or illegible passage in the manuscript has been , 

supplied by a reading concerning which there is no doubt, the J 

words or letters supplied should be placed in square brackets. / 
Where the reading is uncertain, the symbol [?] should be added. J 
Where it is surprising but undoubtedly has the form given, the editor 
may add \_sic\ . 

i. No attempt should ordinarily be made to reproduce in the 
printed text any word which the writer has erased. Where th 
erased word has another substituted for it and offers some indie 
tion of the mental process of the writer, it may be given in a no/e. 
In a report, or a draft of a document, where the erased parts are im- 
portant they should be given in a note, or "lined type" should be 
employed. If the substituted or interlined words are in a different 
handwriting from the rest of the document, the fact should be men- 
tioned in a foot-note. 

J. While punctuation should usually follow the writer, yet when 
his punctuation makes confused readings and there is no chance 
whatever that a rational or modern punctuation would change his 

aning, the latter may be substituted. If the writer habitually 

^s his sentences with a dash, this should be represented in print 

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5. Capitalization. In general, capitals should be printed where-- 
the writer has written capitals. If there is doubt, the editor may 
be governed by the assumption that the writer either intended to 
follow the modern rules in the matter, or to follow the old rule to 
begin every noun with a capital. A capital should always be used 
at the beginning of a sentence unless there is special need to ex- 
hibit the illiteracy of the writer. 

6. Paragraphs. The writer's practice should be followed, ex- 
cept that in printing diaries or journals it is best to follow uniformly 
the habit of making for each date a fresh paragraph, and printing 
the date itself in italics. 

7. The Formal Conclitsioiis and Subscriptions of Letters. These 
should be reproduced as they stand, but it is usually unnecessary to 
give them when one is printing a large collection of letters written 
by the same man. Yet even in this case there may be instances 
where the mode in which he ends a letter is significant. 

8. The Addresses of Letters. These should usually be printed. 
They may be of importance as indicating the location of the person 
to whom the letter is sent. This is a matter of some importance in 
a military campaign. Occasionally, also, the form of the address is 
important {e. g., the famous instance of " George Washington, Esq., 
etc., etc.") The address may be given at the end of the first foot- 
note to the letter. 

9. Endorsements. If there are endorsements upon the letter or 
document which have any historical significance, such as dates, 
summaries, or comments, they should be given in a foot-note at- 
tached to the end of the letter or document. 

10. Order. It is usually best that the letters or documents 
should be printed in a chronological order. A foot-note may give 
a cross-reference to enclosures, if they bear a different date. 

11. A List oi the letters or documents should be given in the 
front pages of the volume. When other documents of the same 
nature or relating to the same series of transactions have been 
printed before, and are not repeated in the volume in question, it is 
desirable to prefix to the volume a calendar in which both the docu- 
ments printed before and those now printed are embraced in one 
chronological series, with a difference of typography indicating the 
former and the latter class. In such chronological lists each item 
should begin with a date, presented in the form : 1789, March 4. 

12. The Running Head-Lines of the pages, or at any rate of the 
right-hand page, should not preserve one identical reading through- 
out the volume, but should in each case give some indication of the 
matter contained on the page below. 

13. A page of the manuscript may with advantage be repro- 
duced by some facsimile process to illustrate characteristic methods 
of the writer. 

14. There should always be an index. 

15. Octavo is recommended as the best size for record pu^'' 
cations. J 



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